Ireland's entry in to next year's Volvo Ocean Race is making a brief stopover in Dun Laoghaire, Co Dublin today.

MOBILE phone company O2 has launched a crackdown on debtors, last week taking 70 people to court to recover €100,000 in unpaid phone bills.

Two Dublin men were jailed for six years at the Special Criminal Court today for the possession of firearms and ammunition.

THERE is a real danger disputes in the health service will spiral out of control, the Labour Party warned yesterday.

The jury in the inquest into the death of a baby girl - found in a plastic bag in a laneway in Dun Laoghaire, Co Dublin in 1973 - has failed to return a unanimous verdict.

THE Government received a school report card yesterday, warning it “must do better” to help educate children from disadvantaged backgrounds.

A retired member of the Garda Special Branch has been remanded for sentence for drunk driving causing death and for failing to remain at the scene of an accident.

Ireland’s top sailors will be honoured at the presentation of the 2004 Cork Dry Gin Sailor of the Year Award at the Dublin International Boat Show on Thursday, February 24.

GENEROUS Irish Examiner readers have helped GOAL expand significantly its humanitarian operations in Darfur, Western Sudan.

THE greatest barrier to development of chronically poor countries in Africa and elsewhere in the developing world is the quality of their political leadership.

TWO recent articles, ‘The Living Dead’

IN her article (The heart of darkness, Irish Examiner, June 9), Ann Cahill gives an insight into the complexity of the problems surrounding the bloodletting in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

WHAT does it take to get the Irish government to stop propping up the corrupt, morally bankrupt and warmongering Ugandan regime with annual overseas aid grants?

AS Todd Martin reported (Irish Examiner, March 6), the target to cut world hunger in half by 2015 will not be met.

THE EU spends the equivalent of $2.20 on agricultural subsidies every day for each cow in Europe.

HOPEFULLY, now that Justice Flood has rattled the Celtic Tiger’s cage, we will wake up to the damage that corruption wreaks in any society, whether in Ireland or elsewhere, and do our best to stamp it out.

TP O’MAHONY is correct (Irish Examiner, Saturday, Sept 7). The Johannesburg summit did indeed fail to free the poor of the world from poverty.

SUZANNE HARRINGTON’S piece (Irish Examiner, Sept 6) concerning the need for tourists to go shopping with bales of euro, expect to pay for the petrol in the pub and carry their shopping home in their respective ‘shoes’ made for most amusing reading.

REVOLUTIONARY tourist, left-wing crustie, noble-minded philantropist or adrenalin junkie, whatever way you look at it, there’s a certain breed of Irishman making his name abroad.

FOR ten years, GOAL has been assisting impoverished and vulnerable people in Angola, a country which has been utterly devastated by a civil war that began shortly after it gained its independence from Portugal in 1975.